Anat Geva is researching how St. Louis’ B’Nai Amoona, designed by Eric Mendelsohn, and other postwar synagogue designs moved from historicism to Modernism and expressed American values.

TAMU grant funds investigation of postwar synagogue design

Anat
Geva

The departure of U.S.
synagogue designs from historicism to Modernism in the 1950s and their
expressions of American values will be investigated by Anat Geva, associate
professor of architecture at Texas A&M, with the help of a $10,000 grant
from the Program to Enhance
Scholarly and Creative Activities, administered by Texas A&M’s Division of
Research.

“After World War II
there was a reconceptualization of the design and construction of houses of
worship in the U.S.,” said Geva. “These changes reflected perceptions of
religious freedom as well as the influences of modern architectural trends and
innovations in building technology.”

Postwar synagogue
designs are examples of how prominent architects embraced these changes to
express American values of freedom of religion, tolerance and democracy, she
said.

Among the first
synagogues to reflect these changes was the B’Nai Amoona, designed by Eric Mendelsohn, an influential
Modernist architect who emigrated to England from Germany in 1933 amid growing
anti-Semitism, then moved to the U.S. in 1941.

The design of the St.
Louis synagogue, built in 1950, was a sweeping architectural statement, wrote
Ivy Schroeder in a Riverfront Times article.

“It leaves traditional synagogue forms behind and dispenses with standard
architectural ornament in favor of startlingly spare, Modern lines,” she said.
“Mendelsohn's radical design infuses the synagogue form with a new spirit; it
acknowledges the past while forging insistently forward.”

Influenced by
Mendelsohn, said Geva, other prominent architects, including Frank Lloyd
Wright, Philip Johnson, Walter Gropius, Louis Kahn,
Marcel Breuer and Minoru Yamasaki ventured to bridge modernism and Judaism in
their design of the American synagogue, while linking their designs to the
American landscape and values.

“These attempts
continued during the 1960s, where modernist architects expressed spirituality,
community, traditional values, and transformation in their design of the modern
synagogue,” she said.

Geva said her study
will add a new dimension to former studies that centered on the socioeconomic
status and cultural traditions of Jewish congregations.